Chapter 1770: Crazy Women |
Alexios caught her, and the old king’s arms closed around his daughter with a gentleness that didn’t match his reputation.
She’d hugged the Primordial Villain first.
Then sprinted straight into the arms of the King of Vraven.
The same girl, the same warmth, handed to two men who had been trying to kill each other for months as if loving both of them was the most natural thing in the world.
Felicity pulled back from the hug, still glowing, and seemed to remember something. She cupped her hands around her mouth with the casual tone of someone calling a cat out from under the couch.
"Mother! Come out! It’s time to go sightseeing!"
The ground rumbled.
A section of frozen earth split open twenty paces away, and Queen Morgana rose from beneath it on a pillar of compressed stone, her dark purple hair plastered to her face with mud, her enchanted gown caked in filth, and her iridescent eyes burning with enough hatred to melt the ice off the dwarven king’s block.
She looked ready to kill someone. Several someones, possibly, starting with the armored figure at the center of this little gathering.
"Did the whole royal family have fun today?" Quinlan asked pleasantly.
Morgana’s glare could have curdled milk.
"VILLAIN!" Elisabeth’s shriek arrived right on schedule, the Arch Priestess storming forward with golden hair flying. "What have you done to my mother?! She’s covered in filth!"
"I parked her underground so she wouldn’t cause problems during the negotiations." Quinlan shrugged dismissively, saying it the way someone would explain where they’d left their coat. "Worked out great, actually."
"You buried the Queen of Vraven like a dirt mole?! How dare you?!"
"She’s my conquered enemy. Her life is in my hands," Quinlan explained nonchalantly.
Elisabeth looked ready to strangle him with her bare hands, golden light and divine mandate be damned. "Tell me," she managed through her teeth, "that you have a good reason for burying my mother alive."
"Yeah." Quinlan looked at Elisabeth wryly. "I’m looking at it."
"...What?"
"If I’d let you meet her earlier, you would’ve still been screeching at me about necromancy, slavery, the Goddess’s will, and who knows what else instead of actually listening to what I had to say."
He gestured vaguely at the field around them. "But look at us now. The beastkin are leaving, reparations are on the table, everything is moving forward. Isn’t it great?"
Elisabeth’s fists shook at her sides.
Then her head snapped around, eyes scanning the field until they found Ayame directing soul officers in the distance.
"That girl!" The Arch Priestess’s voice cracked. "She told me to go find my mother while knowing she was buried the entire time?!"
"Yeah," Quinlan confirmed, thoroughly unbothered. "She wanted to see you run around like a headless chicken."
"You’re the devil!"
"Yeah, that’s my criminal alias."
Elisabeth went quiet. The golden light around her flickered once, twice, and the Arch Priestess looked at Quinlan with calm, measured fury. The screaming was over. She was planning now.
"I will remember every single thing you’ve done today, Villain. Every. Single. Thing."
"Okay," Quinlan nodded.
While Elisabeth visibly restrained herself from committing a cardinal sin on a battlefield, Alexios spoke up.
"Are you alright, Morgana?" His voice was tired and flat.
Morgana turned her blazing eyes on her husband. Animosity burned in them, raw and genuine, directed at him with the same intensity she’d been aiming at Quinlan.
"Shut your mouth."
Alexios blinked. His hand paused mid-stroke on his beard, and for a brief moment the King of Vraven looked like a man genuinely trying to figure out what he’d done wrong by asking his wife if she was alright.
He opened his mouth, reconsidered, closed it, then stroked his beard once and turned away. "...Okay."
She’d been like this before he lost her. She’d been like this after.
Buried in mud, enslaved, humiliated in front of three armies, and still the same cold, hostile woman who’d rather bite the hand reaching for her than take it.
At some point a man simply stops reaching.
Morgana stood rooted in her pillar of mud, staring at the back of her husband’s head as he walked away from her.
"Hah?! Hello?!" Her voice cracked with disbelief. "Don’t you dare move on just like that!"
Alexios kept walking. Didn’t turn, didn’t slow, and the silence he left behind hit Morgana harder than anything Quinlan had done to her.
Elisabeth was still sputtering about barbarism and Morgana’s fury had soured into bewildered offense, and between the two of them they were generating enough hostile energy to power a small city.
Quinlan glanced sideways at Alexios, grinning.
"You’re surrounded by crazy women."
Alexios glanced sideways at Quinlan, exhausted.
"You’re one to talk."
"My girls are the good kind of crazy. The sexy crazy. Yours are just batshit insane. No fun in that."
"...Stop badmouthing my wife and daughter."
"Sure."
They then simply turned their backs on the screeching mother-daughter duo and headed toward the spot where the [Warp Gate] was about to open, two men who had absolutely nothing in common except a shared understanding that engaging further was a waste of everyone’s time.
Jasmine, fingers still laced through his, began hopping along at his side with a smile so wide it crinkled the corners of her eyes.
Felicity fell into step beside Alexios, her small hand finding his, and the old king let her take it without comment.
From opposite sides of the procession, Jasmine and Felicity caught each other’s eyes.
The governor and the freshly cleaned princess stared at each other for a beat, then broke into matching grins so bright and so giddy that the contrast with the two furious women seething behind them could not have been more comical.
Myrasyn glided into formation with Isveth a half-step behind, the elven queen’s ears perked and her posture radiating an eagerness she wasn’t even trying to hide.
"I am NOT going anywhere with this scumbag!" Elisabeth announced, planting her feet.
"Church," Quinlan reminded her over his shoulder.
Her foot moved before her mouth could argue with it.
The [Warp Gate] bloomed open ahead of them, and the procession filed through without breaking stride, led by two lithe ladies with long, excitedly twitching ears.
"W-wait! I’m coming too! You didn’t even invite your superior, Devil?!"
Maelstrom’s voice cracked across the field as the Consortium general broke into a desperate sprint, his legs churning beneath him because the important people were leaving without him.
Quinlan stepped through the gate last and closed it behind him.
The pale energy collapsed into nothing, leaving Maelstrom skidding to a halt on the frozen ground where a portal had been half a second ago, his outstretched hand grasping at empty air.
"..."
Behind him, a cluster of elven soldiers snickered.
"Shut it!" Maelstrom whipped around, jabbing a finger at them. "I am the general of the Vesper Consortium, and I will not be laughed at by-"
The snickering stopped.
Every elf within earshot turned to face him at the same time, and the giddy amusement on their faces died so fast it was like watching candles get snuffed out.
What replaced it was cold, flat hostility, thousands of pairs of eyes locking onto the Consortium general with the synchronized precision of predators who had identified prey.
Then, with the kind of unison that had no business existing outside of a temple choir, thousands of elven women opened their mouths at the same time, and what came out was a single deep, ominous, feminine voice that rolled across the frozen ground like a hymn from the throat of an ancient monster.
"The only man who can order us around is the Holy Son. Know your place, human."
Maelstrom’s finger lowered on its own. His legs, which had already proven unreliable today, decided they wanted to be somewhere else.
"T-tch...!" He scoffed with whatever dignity he could scrape off the frozen ground and turned his back on the elves, stalking toward his Consortium forces with strides that were trying very hard to not be a retreat.
The elven soldiers watched him leave, then returned to their duties as if nothing had happened.
...
On the other side of the [Warp Gate], Myrasyn and Isveth had stepped through first.
What greeted them on the other side stole the words from both their lips.
"Oh, Graceful Mother..." they whispered in unison, floored.
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